Lucky-63 Reviews

Like Sunday, Like Rain (2014)

Could have been much better

[6/10 · 15 February 2016]

*Possible spoilers*

This movie has a lot going for it. Two decent actors in an unusual situation. What failed it is the writing.

A little explicit drama / tension from Eleanor's boyfriend was far from enough. A bunch of hackneyed characters (rich parents who are cynical and don't care, poor parents who are dispirited and don't care) contribute little beyond background. We didn't need them to realize that Eleanor and Reg are special people.

There can be humor on a Sunday or in the rain, but there was little in this tale ... which, in much more skilled hands had loads of possibility. All of New York for locations and we see a couple of parks? What they share in common isn't revealed until too late?

Too bad. Fine photography, nicely directed, but ... a whimper of a story apart from two lonely souls whose days together never light up more than the average day.

High Tech Soul: The Creation of Techno Music (2006 Video)

Could have been great

[4/10 · 28 August 2009]

It was great that somebody did this. For those who are very close to that scene and those times, it is probably interesting. But it focuses too much on the personalities that initiated techno. They're heroes, but no more so than the many people who've carried it much farther, or the fans with the open-mindedness and vision to bring it so far.

There's very little exhibition of the art, very little about the music. (One scene that shows us some gear, and a few shots of turntablism.) Which means that this movie is not for the uninitiated ... and that's disappointing. The movie many times seems to wonder why the music hasn't been more accepted, gone more mainstream.

But what this movie shows the casual viewer - I'm not sure it was intended - is that there's a lot *not* to like about the original scene... or about Detroit. (What's with the college prof rhapsodizing about an empty city?) My respect for what happened there (but not the music) went *down* after seeing the movie. All the more reason it's too bad it didn't focus on the music and the fans more. Because without them, all you got is prima donnas cruisin for props.

Gran Torino (2008)

They say that falling in love is wonderful

[7/10 · 18 July 2009]

This movie is some kind of snake-swallows-its-own-tale cap for Eastwood's career. Somehow he manages, in the course of almost two hours, to work in every one of his famous facial gestures. Disgust, rage, threat, snarl: it's all there. That's one reason to love it. Cuz this movie is about Clint. Forget the plot, really: it's about those adoring Hmong ladies bringing him lots of plates of food. Now there's a hero: Love me.

= SPOILERS=

Another reason to love this story is that the next door neighbor kid abandons an opportunity to be a gangsta. Not does he do that, in favor of the beloved *hard work* this country was built on, he learns how American males talk mano-a-mano. It's so CUTE!

Best of all, the movie's all about cars, our beloved cars. It's set in Detroit. Much of which is lying in ruins after what we called the American dream has awoken in ruins. With the auto companies on life-support, after what they did to us and their employees and the environment (see Michael Moore et al), thanks to the tax dollars earned by us hard-working, self-sacrificing Americans, we get a movie whose main inspirational symbol is an (ugly) US classic automobile. The only 'special features' on the DVD are about the car.

And that legacy gets handed on to the next generation in the end. Along with a great-big-dollop of self-sacrifice. Yeah, take what we've learned from cars and run with it, neighbors. Cuz we're at the end of the line here. You zipperheads.

What did Clint learn from a long life of heroically defending the good against the evil? I guess you'll have to see this film. Marvelous.

Slight Fever of a 20-Year-Old (1993)

Thin gruel

[3/10 · 3 November 2007]

The word "Slight" in the title fits. Thin acting, an equally thin plot line, and a string of vacuously elongated scenes make up this film, which demonstrates what happens when a director in-over-his-head meets a half-finished script and no-experience talents.

"Fever" -- which is supposed to suggest "hot", not "tepid" -- wants to be a morality play about two young hustlers. Tatsaru is a college student working as a male prostitute. Shin works in the same establishment, a bar whose clients choose from a stable of boys.

Aimed at a teen audience, apparently one motive of this movie is to distinguish for the audience the difference between sex for money and love. The film vaguely manages to approximate this, its only clear, idea ... then gives us two or three empty minutes to contemplate it.

Both of the boys are sought after by girls their own age. The father of one girl is a client of Tatsaru in mid-film. When Tatsaru later goes to her parents' home for dinner, there is nothing but the embarrassed "tension" between the two men to keep us interested ... for at *least ten minutes.

Another of the film's apparent motives: to establish that gay men are lonely, and that love between two men is hopeless. This sentiment -- uncontradicted by any of what passes for action in the film -- is spelled out verbatim by an drunken adult client toward the film's end in another of the stretched-beyond belief scenes. Many art films stretch action to good effect, but this film is just filling time.

I hated "Twist" when I saw it, but it was at least competent as a film. "Sudden Fever" can't begin to aspire to that level.

Another Gay Movie (2006)

Funny & smart

[7/10 · 15 June 2006]

AGM could easily have been a flop, as many movies in its genre have been. But plenty of comic ideas, a refreshing sense of fun, hilarious sets, good acting and direction, and less attitude kept this film from the midpoint decay and low sustain that can hurt such films.

The director went for some hot action scenes which can be hard to pull off in a comedy. But the director made them work enjoyably without losing the comic energy. Eat your heart out, QAF!

I saw AGM as a part of Seattle's International Film Festival. The big audience very thoroughly enjoyed it. It's not Rocky Horror, but it might be a sleeper classic of a whole new thang.

The Celluloid Closet (1995)

Sometimes the truth hurts

[8/10 · 30 April 2005]

Celluloid Closet is in fact a political documentary. That's the saddest part about this movie, because what it uncovers is a systematic history of scapegoating in early Hollywood film-making. Americans, overall a generous and tolerant people, have been taught for over a century to despise and fear queers and queer relationships. This movie is about the part of that campaign that was conducted in American film.

But CC isn't just a sad movie. As we see toward the end of the film, the attitude of Hollywood has shifted in recent years. People are slowly seeing past the hatred they've been carefully taught, seeing that queers are ... just people, people who love each other. People who love each other so much that they courageously hold onto that love despite generations of oppression from nearly all quarters of American society, official and unofficial.

Ultimately, despite the contemporary knee-jerk backlash, the wishes of GLBTQ people to enjoy rights taken for granted by all other American citizens will be granted. Americans will come to regret, as with Indians and Blacks, their record of hatred directed against people they have refused to understand. Understanding comes with knowledge, and Celluloid Closet is a key picture, treating its subject with great heart and courage.

The Horse's Mouth (1958)

Ageless, clever, endearing comedy

[8/10 · 2 January 2005]

"Horse's Mouth" certainly stands up well in it's advanced age; at 45 years old it has remained as timeless as any of the great comedic films.

One IMDb writer has tagged Gully as a "vulgar" painter, which goes to show that the sensitivities this film violated are still around. Pinching your loving ex's bum and tickling the rich lady's knee (shades of Groucho), though, are pretty tame today.

Gully Jimson is a rich character, Chaplin-like, who single-mindedly pursues painting while disillusioning aspiring young Nosey about the artist's life. All growled on tiptoes by one of film's classic great actors.

Jimson is a man who's given up all else, including health, wealth, conventional relationships, to live in a leaky houseboat with a vision. But as the story develops it, like all great literature, manages to puncture almost all of life's rationalizing balloons. Jimson is valorized as is Don Quixote, without suggesting that his hero's journey is a painless one.

All is set in a colorful environment with a delightful if conventionally unpolished cast, all the improbably gleeful turns that make the Marx movies so delightful, and a director who contrives seamlessly with Guiness to create a clever and hilarious marvel that can be enjoyed over and over.

Heck yeah, there's even a chase scene! And pull your socks up!

The DVD version includes a short by Pennebaker that feels as fresh and contemporary, accompanied by a Duke Ellington tune, which played along with "Horse's" original release.

The Beach (I) (2000)

Something happening here

[6/10 · 5 December 2004]

The Beach seems to be striving to tell us something about an era. Our heroes go to an island in SE Asia where rather heavily armed native farmers are growing a boatload of pot. Once they get past that danger, they encounter something we're led to think is like paradise.

SPOILER WARNING

The farmers turn out to be capable of killing to protect their crop. They rationalize their aggression by pointing out that the profits feed their families. OK that's probably like the drug lords in SE Asia. And the paradise is full of sort-of-hippy types (a generation removed), so maybe the film is alluding to the Vietnam era? DiCaprio does a video-game-like scene where he goes crazy, which features some sort of tongue-in-cheek dialog from bad movies about Vietnam.

Phew. Hard to tell with this director, who seems to relish the disconnected sensations and dreamy mentations of multi-drug tripping.

Another interpretation might be this: America is like the pseudo-paradise, and the rest of the world, particularly the third world, is like the farmers, who agree to let the islanders have a paradise on their island world if they don't invite any more people.

Either the writers were grossly incompetent or they just wanted to point at a whole lot of things without resolving into any one thing. Or maybe the director just needed a vehicle to flash around some flesh and some dreamy scenery.

And then there's this third theory: the director is a Coen brothers wannabe. Yeah, I think that's it. Throw in a couple ideas from a Meatballs summer camp movie. And a scene quite a bit like one in Y Tu Mama Tambien. And a tribute to Jaws.

Like, maybe if we throw enough stuff at the audience, like Donnie Darko did, they'll dig it, they'll walk out dazed and confused.

This would be like a great drive-in movie by Ed Wood ... if there were any drive-ins left.

Oh heck, Dude, let's just go bowling.

The Sum of Us (1994)

Some of us almost missed this film

[8/10 · 22 October 2004]

Given the blurbs and that the film is set in Australia, I wasn't expecting more than the average gay film. But "Sum" is a remarkable film; it puts "gayness" in perspective.

Not only the story of a couple of wonderful guys looking for love, Sum is a big slice of everyday life up there on the screen. Low-key it might be, but the film's endearing characters and big mistakes (of the sort we all make) keep it right up close.

Far from the relationship portrayed by Hanks and Gleason in "Nothing in Common", Harry and Jeff have a wonderful relationship. Almost too wonderful it seems, halfway through the film; but then "Sum" does something remarkable that carries it far above the surface.

It's too easy to take life for granted. And sometimes it's hard to see past the surface. "Sum" is wise about what matters, without having to paint anyone as a saint or demon. Not many films manage such loving and admirable economy.

Twist (2003)

I was supposed to get taken in

[4/10 · 9 September 2004]

When I walked in, I wondered why the theatre was empty. I wanted to like this movie. Hey, Gary Farmer's a funny guy. I hoped to see something balanced, lifelike, with ups and downs. Instead what I saw was a "scared straight"-style, here's-how-bad-it-can-get cliché without any relief, either humorous or realistic.

I was supposed to get taken in by the comparison of this movie to Dicken's story. Except it was nothing like Dicken's story, except for the names and the squalor. The Victorian gentleman had a handle on reality; this paternalistic and uninspired film wants to paint everything outside the mainstream worldview as endlessly fear-driven and hopeless. It's as if the writers wanted to us to think that Dickens was a pollyanna and wanted us to know how bad things *really* are.

Do such awful things actually happen? For sure. Do -all- of these things happen to real people in the real world? No. Which makes Twist a horror film -- if that's what you're after.

Maybe someone wanted kids to know what they might face if they ran away from abusive homes to the big city. In that case, they should have found out what kids face -- verisimiltude anyone? -- instead of throwing together an orgy of dark imaginations.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Decidedly different

[8/10 · 19 April 2004]

There have been an awfully lot of movies with spies in them. A few have managed to drop the shiny chrome and perfume glitz of the Bond series to reveal that spies are people.

The Bourne I watched is an anti-spy movie. You watch a man with amnesia (no smooth patter, no cocktails, no grey suit, no suave automobile, not even a coat) wearing a sweater with two bullet holes in the back try to discover what he did to discover those holes.

Jason discovers (with considerable horror) what and who he *was*. Yeah, he's not adverse to using his valuable training ("a 30-million-dollar weapon" his former boss calls him) in self-defense as the film throws him a series of deadly threats.

Throughout we see the human side of Bourne confronting the reality of his cool mechanical warriorhood ... a nightmare he's trying to wake up from. We see the event that changed his life uncovered.

There are some aspects of the Bourne character reacting to a nightmare reality that very much parallel the awakening of Neo in The Matrix. You could watch this movie simply as an action-paced suspense. But Bourne strives to unravel the carefully crafted seduction of the phoney Bond image. Here the suave, professional killer is recognized to be little better than a dehumanized junkyard dog, doing the bidding of its master, a completely amoral and disposable human being serving his master ruthlessly.

Ahhhhh.

Lost in Translation (2003)

Lost in quaaludes

[3/10 · 2 April 2004]

I always like Bill Murray movies -- I really really do. Except this one.

Boring. Boring. I mean it. Boring.

Here is the *entire* plot. Older, jaded rich advertising dude hangs around in Tokyo hotel. Younger woman, whose husband professes to love her but is always gone, hangs around in Tokyo hotel. They keep bumping into each other (except in bed). Finally ... nothing.

So what makes this an eight for so many people? I'll have to try to work that out after writing this. Is it the urban allure of Tokyo? Is it because a Coppola made it? Is the Paris Hilton effect? Is it because an older married guy and a younger married woman are hanging out together? Gosh, *that* would have been exciting ... to the Hayes commission!

Maybe it's the elaborate tease. Or the sweet sweetness and innocence. Uh huh. Gosh, that's what TV's all about, isn't it? Berry berry Brady? Yeah that has to be it. The internet-porn saturated population (US) is still dying for real romance. Wow, move over Nelson & Eddy.

Strap on your retropack, John Glenn. Pay no attention to the flames on the way down.

Whiteboyz (1999)

Coulda shoulda woulda

[4/10 · 11 March 2004]

This could actually have been a good movie. Instead it was a bizarre movie.

Whiteboys actually had a point; but it waited until the last 10 minutes to make it. In fact, the last 10 minutes would make a good music video.

But by the time you get there, you don't much care any more. Because you're so tired of Flip being such a one-dimensional human being.

It's probably funnier if you've already drunk a couple of 40s ... but then, who does?

The rest of this comment has been added. Because IMDB insists on a minumum of 10 lines. But sometimes. A half dozen is more than enough. Like Whiteboyz.

About Schmidt (2002)

Slow slower slowest

[3/10 · 26 October 2003]

Schmidt was full of it. Filler that is. It was the dullest film I've started watching in ten years.

I'm not a Nicholson fan, & Schmidt (that's a beer, right?) didn't help. I recall an understated character prone to explosions in "5 Easy Pieces". Hmmm, here he is again. "I wanted to get the Mini-Winni". And you *did*, Jack.

As for the "point" of the "story", 1956's "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit" developed this theme decades earlier. Joni Mitchell's song "The Arrangement" which sings about a man who "could have been more than a name on the door / on the 33rd floor in the air / More than a credit card, swimming pool in the backyard", makes the same "point" much more movingly in a song that lasts a few minutes.

The suburban lifestyle *was* adequately pilloried in the 70s. Then, that 70s generation went on to develop it far beyond the vapid nothingness it represented in those happier, if blinkered, times. Nicholson was part of that generation. He did pretty well at cashing in.

No doubt many people who don't like this film see themselves reflected in it just a litte *too* much. But stop and consider that Schmidt pretty much did all the things majoritarian American culture asked of him. Dressed right, lied convincingly, built a good home. He was even a part of the insurance industry, which a great majority of Americans invest heavily in. Is majoritarian American culture, then, life-avoiding ... or is it a facile if uninspiring adaptation to the world full of violence, duplicity and tedium Jarmusch paints in "Dead Man"?

"Schmidt" is an easy exercise in mud-tossing. It's easy to criticize existing instutions without a vision of viable alternatives. The roles people have been offered and played faithfully in our culture may well be vapid, but what choices did they have? In failing to address how the options were engineered, "Schmidt" writes a check (for $22 to a foster child, about as magnanimous as the Thompson approach to welfare) that it, like so many films of the 70s era, can't cash.

Alexander Nevsky (1938)

Propaganda with masterpiece soundtrack

[8/10 · 19 October 2003]

(Warning: spoilers! -- although it's hard to spoil this film by telling story details.)

Eisenstein's black and white propaganda film is not for everyone. It's very old and it's, er, clumsy. What makes it great for me is the soundtrack, not the original but the updated soundtrack. Better still, the orchestral version Prokofiev created (my favorite performance is by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony).

The film is actually funny in places. It's reminiscent of the old "Midsummer Night's Dream". Some of the outdoor scenes are quite magnificent. Some of the actors are also quite magnificent. (The actor who played Nevsky could have been a superstar today. Ditto for the warrior chick, Vasilisa -- definitely a rocker.)

This may be the world's best collection, on film, of pithy Russian sayings (there are tons of them -- they make up the bulk of the spoken lines).

The battle scenes actually look much more realistic than most high-budget Hollywood flix. These guys are as clumsy with their fighting as real peasants would be. The weapons look nasty, so the actors were probably trying to avoid actually wounding one another.

The actor playing the German "grand marshall" is trying *really* hard to look scary early in the film, but he looks like he was really a pussycat. After he's captured he looks *so* pathetic. (Speaks volumes about the intended audience, da?)

A really humorous touch is that the German army brings an *organ* with it, played by a character in a black robe. Watch the Russians bring this guy down *while* he's playing.

After the battle is over and almost all of the Germans are dead comes the best part of the film (and the music), the song sung to the dead soldiers who've died defending the motherland. This part is so sad it's almost an anti-war statement.

Ten times as many men as ladies have rated this film. Wonder why?

Warning: Joseph Stalin liked this film. Ironic -- he killed more Russians than anybody. "Those who come to Russia carrying a sword will die by the sword".

From Hell (2001)

From Absinthe-Are-Us

[5/10 · 10 October 2003]

"From Hell" proves that no matter how much money you throw at a crappy script and amateur direction, you don't get a good movie.

See, it isn't just enough to pick one of the most sensationally gory police blotter stories of the past century, throw buckets of money at costumers & set folks, and pick two or three good actors. You have to motivate them to act with good writing. Or *something*.

The story is such old hat that it needed a really good angle. Implicating the royal family isn't new. The Whitechapel wannabes wandering the very well-scrubbed sets are all well-scrubbed and their clothing is meticulously clean. AS IF! Late 19th century London was DIRTY, PEOPLE! How is it all of these whores, too poor to have a place to live, are running around in NEW clothes that look like they just got out of the dry cleaners? (Read that last line like Sam Kinnison would have, screaming "just got out...")

There are a few shots of squeamish gore. After all, that's what we paid to see, right? ICHOR! ICHOR! But the reactions of the police actors and public onlookers? I'd expect better reactions from actors in a high school play. They look more like they stepped in dogcrap. (Hmmm.)

Inspector Depp spends much of his screen-time doing free advertising for absinthe. What, he's sorry he didn't do "Total Eclipse"?

Robbie Coltrane's character (amiable Coltrane has the only lively part in the movie) can't decide if the inspector is his buddy ("Goodnight sweet prince", he says at the end of the movie ... ECCCH! Shakespeare!) or his boss (when Depp snaps an order at him, he gets all ... *obedient*).

I know, I know, this whole movie is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek.

Right?

Contact (1997)

The Contact light is ON

[8/10 · 10 October 2003]

"Contact" is what happens to scientist Ellie as she goes through an experience that leaves her in the same boat as her suitor Palmer Joss.

"Did you love your Father, " Joss asks her. Of course. "Prove it." Joss has written a book promoting the idea that science has not answered the question of meaning, while stripping the world of "cherished beliefs". Ellie is the scientist who wants empirical proofs -- not wanting to settle for the shifting sands of "belief" and "faith".

The result is a drama that tests the foundations of both approaches to the big questions. There are no answers. The government (as in "Temple of Doom") hides the only real empirical evidence it spent BILLIONS and BILLIONS to find.

"Contact" treats Ellie sweetly and supportively throughout. That she is a "girl" and in science would have seemed pretty radical at one time. Not any more. Are there some kinds of experiences in space that "The Right Stuff" can't deal with? Astronauts had religious experiences during flights that were largely hushed up. Maybe the experiences were just too private. Maybe all important experiences are private.

Joss doesn't characterize science fairly. "The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research, " Albert Einstein said. "Contact" goes part of the way to making that clearer. See it billions and billions of times.

The Time Machine (1960)

Classic for children and young-at-heart

[10/10 · 18 May 2003]

The best of the "Time Machine" lot, and one of the two best of George Pal's wonderful career. The movie bears the Pal stamp of affection for the characters and their dilemmas, and wonder with the mystery and magic of the world.

Keeping in mind the budget for this film, Pal worked wonders. One can only imagine what he might have done with $100 million. No doubt we'd see the Traveller's journey into the Earth's distant future. But I imagine that H. G. Wells would have loved this film as is, and would agree that Pal's realization of his timeless story captures it's Victorian romanticism, spirit of adventure, progressiveness and caring for the timelessness of the bold and courageous human spirit.

Total Eclipse (1995)

Eccentric and poetical

[7/10 · 17 April 2003]

This movie is not for the faint of heart or the conventional taste. It's not a fantasy.

Like the real-life characters upon which the movie is based, TE is eccentric and poetical. French poet Rimbaud, who wrote almost everything he wrote as a teenager, has been admired by some of the most eccentric creative people of the last century. He was a very unusual teenager, being some kind of genius, some kind of lowlife, and a runaway. His poetry digs into and portrays life with discomforting and sometimes painful and sometimes ecstatic detail. His is the muse which revels in the squalor of creation.

Many people will dislike this film because the two main characters, Rimbaud and Verlaine, are bisexual and not at all stereotypical. Both of them are snotty and selfish and violent and often despicable. (As Shakespeare probably was at times, but you'll never see him portrayed in movies that way.) These are not Robert Frost poets. These are worm and scat and sex and drug and rock'n'roll and get-down-and-get-dirty poets.

Past that, it's the story of a great, if brief, flowering love ... the kind of love story you'd expect for people who live and breathe life in the way great alternaculture poets must.

Eternity is where the sunlight mixes with the water. And the penetrating movie mixes with the prepared mind.

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Love is scarce in the world

[8/10 · 16 April 2003]

MOPI is a mostly grim road movie about Mike (played by River Phoenix). Mike is a poet who falls asleep a lot. When he's awake, his life is like a nightmare. Nobody loves him. In fact, nobody in the movie even seems capable of love. A bad place to look for love. Everybody Mike meets uses him in some way. He has somewhat of a friend in the Keanu Reeves character, who helps him on a journey to find his lost mother, and even manages to take some pity on Mike. But in the end, he's still alone.

Somehow Mike keeps winding up back on the same stretch of lonely scrub-surrounded Idaho highway. A sign on the highway reads "Warning to tourists: don't laugh at the natives."

In the final scene, back on the Idaho highway to nowhere, Mike is poetizing about the road when he falls asleep again. Now we get a bible-like scene -- the parable of the good samaritan. First, close-up, he's robbed of his bag and shoes, then, in a distant camera shot, a car pulls up, parks protectively, and the driver puts him in the front seat and drives away.

It's up to us to decide whether that's a happy ending or not.

The movie is salted with some Shakespeare, and more interestingly with all kinds of American patriotic music, which Van Sant has placed wryly. As in the much earlier "Easy Rider", we're not just seeing the underside of American culture here but some painful truths about America as well.

Why is it called "My Own Private" Idaho? One man's opinion would be one guess ... Van Sant gets credit as the screenwriter. On the other hand, it has a lot of things to say about love ... some things Shakespeare forgot to say ... and so applies to us all. Oh yeah ... and maybe because I.da.ho sucks.

River's Edge (1986)

Lord of the Flies on acid

[3/10 · 1 December 2002]

A preachy, finger-pointing film with a banal, bigoted view of the world. Predictably, all of its characters are flat, as empty-headed as the plot and the careless, unadorned direction. Showing an extremely jaundiced, cartoonish view of humanity, it does its best to try to scare kids into thinking that their only hope in the world is to adopt mainstream values. Flabby conservative social engineering in its most obvious guise.

The film's only redeeming feature is that it accurately captures the deep despair and self-deception of the Reagan-Bush era and the people who made it possible.

New Waterford Girl (1999)

FunnySmartReal

[8/10 · 10 November 2002]

Clever, smart, modern coming-of-age pic made in Canada (surprise! a movie *this* cool made in Canada?)

What would it be like to grow up in the Canadian maritime provinces *and be different*?

Well the heroine Moonie (this a movie about girls! so it has some cute -- but not too cute -- guys too) *is* different. But so is everyone else. In fact, they're all too different, you don't really see the creeps, burnouts, basket cases that small-town life invariably throws up.

On the other hand, this *is* a movie. Moonie's family is loaded with characters and they're all cool ... sorta. Even the 'rents, in their own way.

Many characters are hilarious without losing their humanity. The whole town's Catholic and mostly Irish at that. Most situations are like real-life teenhood ... so sex is a predominant element. The setting is *very* real -- it's every backwater set-by-the-water hole-in-one that every teen longs to escape (sorry Rockford IL, but close enuf for IFMN).

Moonie's girlfriend, from New York (where Moonie yearns to go ... or any other place she's memorized the street map for), is a sweet and heavy-duty friend -- right outta Dazed and Confused -- who's the daughter of a jailed boxer and drives a rez car. In fact, substitute Indians in this movie and it'd work the same.

I won't go on and on, you get the driftwood. Fans of Linklater, Trainspotters, Depp and the ilk (like me) will enjoy NWG.

Vanilla Sky (2001)

Deep, worth at least one viewing

[7/10 · 3 July 2002]

You'll have to sit patiently through the first forty minutes of this film. There are times when it drags a lot, seemingly without reason. Don't try it if you're not wide awake and patient. (Unless you can't get enough of Cruise.)

Then the film takes off and accelerates. The remainder explores many classic (and modern; it reminds me of Phil Dick) questions and dilemmas (what's real, what's love about, what's worth doing, beauty is skin deep, etc etc), in a modern context, with a lot of good acting. (Surprise, Tom Cruise can actually act!) Even if you're familiar with many of the themes and techniques used, it's a refreshingly confusing whirlwind and refuses to hand you easy answers.

Lucky rating: 7/10

The Kid (2000)

If crutches were funny

[3/10 · 12 June 2002]

The Kid was born retarded. It pulls in a half-dozen directions, features dialog and action lifted from much older and better-known flops, and might be funny -- if only the writers knew what funny is.

Disney stuff has gotten a lot better in the last couple of decades, but don't let that fool you. They should have given The Kid a wide berth, sang it a lullaby, then ran the train into a ravine. Mercy killing.

Antitrust (2001)

Hackers had way more style

[6/10 · 13 May 2002]

Somebody apparently decided to see if they could make a movie as good as Hackers. They even took several basic plot elements from Hackers. And they even spent some time at Slashdot learning why Microsoft is evil and hyping that tedious story. The Bill Gates analog character is this thin: replace the word "innovative" with the word "creative".

But it didn't happen -- because the scriptwriters were instructed to stuff the movie full of devices older than James Bond. Worse, to play on your paranoia, they left out the humor. The movie is above average in one way: you can't be stupid if you want to keep up with how all the old devices are woven together. But then your careful attention is repaid with predictability at every step of the game.

An old Holly wood story: talented cast turns in some wonderful performances, but can't overcome the uncreative scriptwriting. So, unlike Hackers, this is just another movie... trying to pry your bucks loose with fresh talent and up-to-date news pasted over the oldest cardboard in the business.